


Pack (and Unpack (and Unpack))

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Break Up, Recovery, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 04:50:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14036535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: At the end of it all, there will be nothing but boxes full of things you don't need and nowhere left to put them.





	Pack (and Unpack (and Unpack))

Stuff is so easy to collect. All of it, any kind. There’s practically nothing anyone can do to stop you from picking it up, deciding you like it, buying it and cramming it on a shelf where you know good and well it doesn’t fit. People will say not to buy it, you don’t need it. There’s no use for all these shirts with the name of the band your ex used to like, all the tiny figurines of animals that looked like him somehow, the sheets that still smell like him. They can say not to keep it, not to get it in the first place, but they can’t do anything to stop you. Unfortunately.

A relationship of six years leaves behind a lot of stuff when it’s been cast to the side. Too much stuff. Every single corner is home to so many things that don’t matter anymore, so much that belongs to someone who no longer calls this home. Must be nice to be able to leave, Wonwoo thinks as he stares bleakly into the linen closet. Filled to bursting, and not a single bit of it is necessary anymore. Vitamins he never took, towels that aren’t his, a stack of fading comic books that couldn’t fit anywhere else. The kitchen cabinets house twice as many mugs as Wonwoo could ever need, and it makes him sigh. He could have at least taken some of this shit.

Six years is a long time, and Wonwoo knows that. It is a long, long time, and people change. Feelings change. Rivers wind and bend, they meet up with each other, they separate again. Wonwoo knows that, but it doesn’t cheer him up. He hates geography, rivers, all of it. He wants to stop seeing familiar silhouettes behind the curtains and faces in the popcorn on the ceiling. His brother is going to call him when he finds out to rub in how right he was, but Wonwoo doesn’t want to hear it. Every single piece of junk in this apartment is a grain of salt for his wound, and he’s got far more than enough.

The only real solution to having too much stuff that you don’t need or want is to get rid of it. Wonwoo thinks about burning it all, but the three problems with that are it’s a major environmental hazard, not all of it is readily burnable, and, sadly, he’s too sentimental to just torch everything. Maybe he’ll come back to ask for something, Wonwoo thinks, heart lead at the idea, though he doesn’t know what he’d do in the face of that. Maybe he’d just act like he burned it all anyway. He knows he hasn’t got the composure for that kind of lie; he’d let him back in only to watch him leave again.

For Wonwoo, all he can think to do is move it somewhere he doesn’t have to think about it, so that’s what he does. Two very painful weeks wear by before he decides he’s had enough of that colored toothbrush cup labeled with their names greeting him every morning, and he drives out to buy an armful of boxes he hopes will be enough to fit everything. It’s painstaking arranging it all inside them, trying to find ways nothing will break. Wonwoo tells himself he doesn’t care if anything breaks, but he knows he does care.

The boxes leave barely enough room in the car for him to fit in the driver’s seat, but he’s determined to get it all out in one go. Given that he can’t take it to his parents’ place, his next best bet is renting a storage unit to keep it all locked up. Fifty bucks a month for fifty square feet of floor space. What a price to pay to hang onto memories he doesn’t want. The facility he heads to has a big sculpture of a key out front, layered in paint that looks twenty years old. Everything smells like dust.

Only one person sits in the office when he steps into it, a lone guy who looks too young to be a management type, though his eyes are hard and cold enough to suggest he might be anyway. He chews gum while Wonwoo walks toward the desk, blowing small bubbles that deflate before they can catch any real air. As Wonwoo nears, he spits it into the garbage can under the desk. Judging by the pallor, it can’t have tasted like much just a second ago.

“What can I do for you?” the attendant asks him. His face is stone, but his voice is warmer than Wonwoo expects it to be, soft and gentle. The dust ringing the edges of the desk starts to seem welcoming.

“I’m looking to rent a unit,” Wonwoo says. The guy leans to the side for a better look out the window—Wonwoo takes the chance to read the name _Minghao_ off the card on his lanyard—and eyes up Wonwoo’s truck, mouth still a flat line. He looks tired.

“I guess you’ve already brought everything you want to store,” he says more than asks, voice leaning toward a sigh.

“Uh, yeah,” Wonwoo tells him. “Should I have called first or something?”

“Technically, yes.” Minghao flattens his hands against the desk and pulls himself upright, and he’s taller than Wonwoo thought he would be. From this angle, his eyes look so different, so much deeper, darker. He is a lot of things Wonwoo was not expecting him to be. “But you’re fine. If you want to rent one, we’ve got plenty free. Come with me to the office and we can get your paperwork filled out.”

The office is a cramped room down a skinny hall the two of them can hardly fit in shoulder to shoulder, but Wonwoo follows him to it anyway, steps echoing and overlapping until he can’t hear anything but. Even here, everything looks like old paint, dripping with dust and gray. All the lights in the building are painfully dull, and his eyes are still trying to adjust. Inside the office, there is an unoccupied desk with one metal chair on either side of it, and Wonwoo sits in the one closer to the door while Minghao waits for the printer to cough up the forms he’s after.

“You’ll need to fill out all of these now,” Minghao explains, unenthusiastic, as he hands them across to Wonwoo, “because you didn’t contact us beforehand.” He points to each section as he explains what to put where, but Wonwoo only notices how long his fingers are, how slender. How different from the ones he’s used to. Was used to. “Ask if you have questions,” Minghao says, leaning back in his seat. “I’ll be right here.”

Filling out forms when someone is watching you fill them out evokes a bizarre sort of nervousness that Wonwoo can’t stand. Every now and then, he glances up, but Minghao is never looking at him, and somehow that’s worse. Minghao’s presence is intense for no reason, and it’s distracting Wonwoo enough, but not in a good way. He’s been needing a distraction, he reminds himself. But not quite like this.

“Done?” Minghao asks after a while, and Wonwoo feels like he’s much too patient for someone who’s left the front desk unattended.

“Not yet,” Wonwoo tells him. “Shouldn’t you go back to the front desk?” Slowly, Minghao takes a look at his watch.

“Seokmin should be there by now,” he hums, lips curving into a muted sort of grin. “I’m fine. Worry less about me and more about your paperwork.” There’s something unbearably heavy in his voice. Wonwoo coughs.

Eventually, with almost minimal help, he manages to get the forms completed, and Minghao leads him back out into the hallway, down toward another office just as small as the first. Nobody is ever anywhere, only Minghao and Wonwoo, and it makes his stomach feel empty. Not like a place like this needs too much staff, Wonwoo guesses, but it still has him sweating.

“Alright, Mr. Jeon,” Minghao says. “You’ll be in unit G14.”

Wonwoo doesn’t like the sound of his name that way. Something about _mister_ makes him feel so old, and something about feeling old makes him remember how many years he’s been alive, how he’s just lost six of them to bitterness. Those are convoluted bridges to take, he’s sure, but when you’re hurting enough, a spider’s thread can get you where you want to go.

“If you’ll hop back in your car and follow me across the lot,” Minghao continues, “I’ll help you unload everything into the unit.”

“You don’t have to help,” Wonwoo insists. Truthfully, he’s afraid one of the boxes won’t be closed enough, or that Minghao will see that they’re all labeled Box of Garbage #N. Minghao stares at him for a second before pulling a key from his pocket and walking off.

“It’s my job, so I do have to,” is what he says, then disappears around the corner of the main building only to reemerge shortly after in a dinky golf cart. It’s a bright pastel green that contrasts drastically with the gray dimness of everything else, and Minghao looks so out of place behind its wheel, tired as he waits on Wonwoo to get in his own car. The pro is that it’s an easy thing to follow, but Wonwoo can’t help but feel that Minghao’s driving it a little too fast.

Unit G14 is much farther in the corner than its early alphabet position implies, and Minghao is already turning the key in its lock by the time Wonwoo manages to straighten himself out in one of the many empty parking spaces spread in front of it. He waits for Wonwoo to come in and see it, door propped open against his arm all the while, eyes patient yet not. Wonwoo’s footsteps are loud on the concrete, but the sound dies off quickly, like they’re slowly being sealed in a vacuum. Just the two of them and all his ex’s junk. What a way to go.

“How’s it look?” Minghao asks, though Wonwoo isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say. It’s nothing but an empty metal room with low ceilings, somehow both smaller and larger than he thought it would be. Looking at it from this angle, the emptiness is appealing. It would be so much more convenient if Wonwoo could just move in here instead, leave his apartment to rot in its oversaturation, but he’s already gone to the effort of packing everything up, and Minghao is watching. A slow breath comes through his nose.

“Looks fine.”

“Great.” Minghao doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s that great. “Now let’s get on moving everything in here.”

Box by box, they empty the car. Even though Wonwoo packed each one himself, he’s surprised by how many there are. From the back, the compartment starts to fill up, and when Minghao sets the final box down, it’s nearly at two-thirds capacity. Mostly, Wonwoo’s surprised he could fit so much in his car, surprised his apartment still has anything in it at all after this. Minghao eyes the giant puzzle they’ve built together and hums.

“You sure have a lot of garbage.” Wonwoo winces. He noticed the box labels.

“It wasn’t always garbage,” Wonwoo mutters. A thick silence drags on a little too long before Minghao coughs.

“Sounds like a can of worms I don’t get paid enough to open on the clock,” he says, and Wonwoo winces again because he’s not wrong. Looking at all this crap is suffocating him, and he needs a good run to just vomit out everything he’s feeling about it, but he has no audience. His audience for every other problem he’s had for the past several years is now the problem, and nobody else is going to listen without blaming him for being too damn sentimental. He already knows he’s too sentimental. That doesn’t mean he wants to hear about it.

“Well,” Minghao continues, smile thin and very false, “about the rest of our procedures. We’ll keep your key here, so if you want to drop anything else off or take anything out”—Wonwoo will not—“you’ll have to stop by the office and have whoever’s there come open it for you.”

“I can’t just take the key?” Not that Wonwoo thinks he’ll be needing to get in much anyway. “What if I need to drop something off really late?”

“We’re always staffed,” Minghao informs him, less than gentle but not quite hostile. “It may seem weird to you, but from the CEO’s perspective, any murderer who’s thought of renting a unit to drop bodies off in has a slimmer chance of getting away with it this way.”

“That seems a little farfetched.”

“Maybe to you.” Minghao hums, twists the key in the door until it clicks. “But there’s a scandal in there somewhere, and we’re not getting caught in it.” Fair, Wonwoo figures. “Just stop by the office next time you need to get in, and we’ll get you there. Thanks for storing with us.” His tone rings with a bizarre finality, mixed with the memorized roboticism of a line he’s been forced to say over and over again without meaning. Wonwoo watches him hop back in that ugly golf cart and putt away, and he hopes he won’t be stopping back by the office any time soon.

 

Getting it out of the house is at least eighty percent of the battle, or so Wonwoo thought, but it turns out to be more like half. Less than half. Twenty percent. He doesn’t have to see any of it anymore, but the difference in the way he has to interact with his own home is jarring. He still walks carefully around corners to avoid knocking into delicate trinkets that aren’t there anymore, still squints to find his mugs in the cupboard when they’re the only ones left. The couch is too neat, the fridge too empty, the walls too bare. Did he really have to leave Wonwoo with all of it?

Three weeks after he’s dropped everything off at the unit, he’s still tripping over his own feet whenever he’s not at work. Sometimes, he doesn’t think about it. He wakes up, drinks his coffee, showers, puts on a fresh shirt. He’s good. On his way home later, rain will start to hit the windows, and then a song will come on the radio, a familiar tune, sad and bittersweet. They danced to it once, and Wonwoo remembers everything, like how he got his toes stepped on twice.

The universe is trying to force some kind of cosmic mood on him, and he can’t let it win. He won’t change the station because he’s an adult and he’s getting over it, and he won’t cry while driving for the same reasons, but when he gets home, he’ll see the couch and think about what it used to look like with someone else lounging on it, and then he’ll sit down and forget how to move. And he’ll wish he had that warm blanket still, one he’s already folded and shoved in a box labeled Box of Garbage #13. And then he’ll cry.

There are also things of Wonwoo’s he can’t even stand being around anymore, like the almost-brand-new sheets and the nice dress shoes he got for his birthday. The sheets still smell like companionship, so he throws them in a fresh box and buys new ones even though his wallet doesn’t want him to. The shoes remind him of dates he went on, things he said, things that were said to him, and looking at them makes him feel empty. He hasn’t got any dates to wear them for anyway, so he puts them sole up in the same box and drives back to the storage facility when he should already be asleep.

The same face as last time greets him when he stalks into the front office, just as bored and blank. He’s chewing gum again, and Wonwoo wonders if he passed through a time loop on the way here and it’s their first meeting for a second time. Minghao spits his gum out without blowing any bubbles, though, which means there either wasn’t a time loop or this version of his visit isn’t going to go quite the same. Minghao looks up at him while he approaches.

“Evening,” he says, not betraying any hint he remembers Wonwoo at all. Maybe he doesn’t. Surely a lot of other people are coming through. “What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to drop something off in my unit,” Wonwoo tells him. Two in a row doesn’t quite make a pattern, but Wonwoo’s head is fuzzy when he thinks about how the only person he’s ever seen here is this guy in front of him, even if he did mention another name last time. Minghao hums.

“Unit number?”

“G14.”

Without another word, Minghao stands and departs down that narrow corridor, receding into the dark on hollow steps. He returns shortly, and Wonwoo hears him on his way, given away by the haunting sound of jingling keys as it bounces between the walls. The ring has at least thirty keys on it, and he watches Minghao single one out and hold it above the rest, squint at its front. “Mr. Jeon?” he asks.

“Just Wonwoo is fine.” For another moment, Minghao looks him over.

“Mr. Jeon is you, right?”

“Yes,” Wonwoo sighs. “That’s me.”

The golf cart is just as gaudy as Wonwoo remembers it, and his pathetic unit on the edge of the lot is just as full. Minghao watches him closely while he walks his lone box in, much less sure than last time, and it takes a lot of willpower not to rip the others open and start poring over their contents. Parts of him say he’s starting to forget what’s in them to begin with, but smarter parts of him assure him he still knows very well.

“Ah,” Minghao says. “Box of Garbage. Now I remember you.”

Excellent, Wonwoo thinks. I’m the garbage man. But he says it out loud on accident, and Minghao giggles. It’s strangely cute, that laugh, small and childish and charming even when his face falls back to stone too quickly to own up to it. It’s familiar in a way that stings.

“I’m surprised you still have anything at your place with all the garbage you’ve got in here,” Minghao says, dry, with just a bit of a whistle. Looking at all the boxes, Wonwoo can’t blame him.

“I have a lot of stuff,” he says. “Too much. Way too much.”

For a long while, they stare at the boxes together without speaking. Though he wants to leave already, Wonwoo is transfixed, feet melting into the cement, staring down every last box and remembering what’s in it. Box #17 is standing resolute in the front row, and he knows it’s full of those little cats he used to buy whenever he went on trips, painted with cute faces that reminded him of one he never gets to see anymore. Those were what Bohyuk always told him he would regret the most, and he was right. At least two other boxes are filled with them. They’re one of those things fire wouldn’t quite take down.

“You sound like you need a drink,” Minghao tells him, soft on the air. “Or a life coach.” Wonwoo laughs, and the sound of it is bizarre to him, filtered through a fish bowl.

“Maybe I need a little of both.”

“Are you free?”

Wonwoo snorts. “Free is an understatement.”

“My shift is ending soon,” Minghao says, leaning on one arm against the wall. “I could use a drink myself.”

“Huh?” Maybe Wonwoo should have seen that was where he was heading; Minghao is looking at him like it was obvious. Like he’s the train conductor and this is the final stop on the only route. Like he’s the sun and Wonwoo stayed up all night to make sure he’d rise again. “Really?”

“If you want.” Minghao looks at his watch again and twirls his key ring with a jingle that sounds like metal rain. “Just seems like you’ve got a lot to unpack.” Wonwoo blinks at him.

“Good one.”

“What?”

“Unpack.” He gestures to the inside of the unit. “Boxes. Were you not trying to make a joke?”

“I wasn’t,” Minghao says, “but you’re right.” A tiny smile cracks his face, and its unfamiliarity is a great comfort. “That was a good one.”

 

Minghao picks a bar, and Wonwoo drives to it ahead of him only to sit in his car and wait in the parking lot like he used to do back in high school. While he waits in the stuffy silence of his car, watching headlights pass by on the road in his rearview, he wonders what he’s doing. The way to get over a breakup is not by drinking it down. Not by spilling every last bean to a total stranger. It’s not by moving everything that reminds you of your ex into a storage unit indefinitely, either, but Wonwoo ignores that. After a few minutes, Minghao walks by the front of his car to wait by the bar’s entrance, so Wonwoo climbs out to join him.

It’s a quiet place, mostly populated by older types, and the radio softly pumps some of those more dated rock tunes Wonwoo can still listen to without any attached memories coming back to haunt him. Minghao leads them to the bar, unoccupied but for a pair of old men bickering loudly at its furthest edge, and Wonwoo just barely catches himself. He used to envision his future like that, old and cranky in the most harmless way. He used to take it as a given. There is no way he’s going to cry right now. Not at this bar.

Minghao orders a martini, which Wonwoo did not take him for, and he eats the olive straight up, which Wonwoo also did not take him for. He didn’t take him for someone who asked business patrons to join him for drinks either, though there likely isn’t a company rule against it for a place like that. Wonwoo takes a swig of his rum and coke and waits for Minghao to say something, but he doesn’t. He tries to think of something to say, but he can’t. Even with the gentle rumble of the music, it’s too quiet.

What was he thinking, coming here? What is he doing right now? Neither of them are talking, and it’s awkward. Awkward like the way he had to lay all the picture frames in the apartment face down for a few days and kept bumping into their overhanging edges. Sipping at his martini, Minghao doesn’t seem too bothered about the lack of conversation, but it’s eating Wonwoo from the outside. Like an olive.

“So,” Minghao drawls after a while, “my name is Minghao.”

“I know that.”

“Yeah. Because I wear a name tag.” The light refracts through his glass, still mostly full. “I’m trying to break the ice because you won’t say anything.” 

“I don’t have anything to say,” Wonwoo defends, but Minghao snorts before he finishes. Not like he didn’t already know it was a lie.

“You look like there’s a lot you want to say,” Minghao says, “so just say some of it.” Wonwoo sighs. His glass is emptier than he remembered it just a moment ago.

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Why not start with why you’re keeping a storage unit full of garbage?”

“It’s not really… garbage.”

Light coming from the bulbs dangling above the bar glows in Minghao’s eyes, two separate candle flames behind frosted glass. His smile is subtle and weak, neither friendly nor neutral. It’s a light encouragement that wants Wonwoo to keep going. In some way, he looks so bizarrely familiar, expression so close to one that used to comfort him, and it makes Wonwoo’s throat clog up.

“It’s more like I just never wanted to see any of it anymore.”

“So why not just trash it?”

“I’m too sentimental,” Wonwoo spits. He says it so much like Bohyuk he almost forgets that he said it himself. “Besides, it’s not mine. Mostly. Not completely, anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s my bo—my ex-boyfriend’s stuff. Our stuff we got together. That he left at my place when he dumped me.”

“That’s a lot of stuff,” Minghao muses. “How long were you together?”

“Six years.” Minghao whistles after he says it, and Wonwoo knocks back the rest of his glass. The center of his stomach feels so sickly empty to actually be talking about this out loud, augmented by the strangeness of talking about it to someone he doesn’t even really know. Someone who can only get half of the story at most, Wonwoo’s half. That’s completely unfair, and he knows it, but it’s not more unfair than being saddled with thirty boxes of memories it hurts to think about. “He barely took anything. He left it all with me.”

“Did he say why?”

Wonwoo shrugs, slams a fist into his leg. Just thinking about it again is making him mad. Their last conversation. While he was on his way out the door. Wonwoo isn’t going to cry angry tears, god damn it. “He didn’t want any of it,” Wonwoo spits, “because it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s what he said.”

Minghao sits silent for a while, soaking it up, and Wonwoo feels stupid when he doesn’t say anything even though he knows he shouldn’t. Would it have killed him to take one goddamn thing? What’s Wonwoo going to do with a whole litter of three-inch-tall porcelain cats? They don’t even look like him.

“Why don’t you just get rid of it, then?”

“It’s not mine.” Wonwoo is drinking faster than he should, and he’s also talking in circles, but realizing what’s happening is never quite enough to stop it. “It’s ours.”

“Yeah, but he said he doesn’t want it, so it’s yours now.” Minghao watches Wonwoo’s glass drain again while his own sits idle. “Between you and me, you’re wasting money hanging onto it.”

“I know,” Wonwoo grumbles, “but what if he decides he does still want something and I’ve already gotten rid of it?”

That’s not it, Wonwoo thinks. It’s not _something_. What Wonwoo really means is what if he decides he still wants _me_ , still wants _us_ , and I don’t have any of the blocks left to build what we had? What if he comes knocking at the door realizing how wrong it was to leave in the first place and Wonwoo doesn’t have that same old blanket to wrap around his shoulders and hug him back home? He can’t get rid of it. Too many open endings. Minghao lets out a long breath, heavy and trembling.

“If you ask me,” he hums, “he doesn’t deserve anything he does want.” Another sip of his martini, and Wonwoo wonders if he’s still on the same one from the beginning. He thinks so. “I think he gave up the right to have it back when he said none of it mattered.” Wonwoo huffs. Maybe that’s right.

“Whatever,” he says, because he can’t think of anything better, and he sinks another gulp while Minghao watches him.

For a while, the silence is comfortable, or at least not unbearably uncomfortable. Minghao doesn’t drink much despite being the one who said he could use a drink earlier—maybe by “a drink” he really did mean only one, Wonwoo supposes—and he doesn’t talk, just gazes at the TV mounted behind the bar while Wonwoo drinks next to him. The audio from the TV is cut, replaced by the radio station and its classic rock hits, and all Wonwoo’s focus is taken up listening to it.

That was always his thing. They went to shows together, all kinds, but it was never for the groups Wonwoo liked. Not that many of them were touring, but still. The good thing about it is that he can still listen to these same old songs without thinking about anything, still wear those old shirts he has with the band names in vintage font. For a long time, he listens, song after song, glass after glass. When he closes his eyes, he can’t tell if Minghao is still there, and that might be a good thing. Maybe he did need a drink.

After a few more song changes, they hit a newer tune, and Wonwoo’s eyes snap open. _Oh, this song isn’t bad._ Wonwoo can still hear that voice clearly, the exact way he said it, light on the _oh_ and gentle on the _this_. He can remember perfectly the way he was standing, leaned against Wonwoo’s door jamb with his head quirked to the side. Wonwoo had been balancing his checkbook, but he walked in and kissed him anyway. For Christ’s sake, why can’t he forget any of it? Wonwoo dabs at one eye and draws his fingers back wet, just like he suspected.

“Fuck,” he grunts. Beside him, Minghao turns, and he looks like he’s also just remembered he was here with company.

“You alright?” he asks. Clearly not, Wonwoo would say if he wasn’t busy gargling on his own sadness, but he is busy, so he just frowns and feels the sensation of a few tears taking a warm trip down his face. Distantly, he feels the sensation of a hand on his shoulder, which he guesses has to be Minghao’s, but he isn’t sure how long it was there before he realized.

“He liked this song.” It’s relevant to mention that he hated almost all the other songs Wonwoo liked, but Wonwoo’s throat is closing up. “Six years,” he manages, swallowing hard. “Fucking… six.” He turns now to face Minghao fully, and the light is doing things, softening him around the eyes. He looks like an oil painting, muted colors and glossy smoothness, slowly dripping away from the present. He looks shiny and pretty like Wonwoo wished he could understand, and the familiarity of the white stars in his eyes strangles him.

“I was going to propose,” he chokes out, and now is when he realizes that he really was. He had the bands picked out and reserved. They were going to go to lunch, and he was going to ask, finally. After so long spent wanting to. It would have been two weeks from now, and none of it matters. Now he’s really crying. The hand on his shoulder gets a little heavier.

“Maybe we should leave,” Minghao suggests. With every passing second, he gets blurrier, until he’s nothing but a smudge of color in front of a smudge of darkness.

“I was going to propose,” Wonwoo repeats, hoarse. He hears Minghao breathe out.

“Maybe we should leave.”

 

In the morning, Wonwoo’s head is pounding. He stares at the ceiling for a long while, watching until the whiteness stops moving around on itself and everything is still around him. It’s been a long time since he drank like that, and the longer he spends watching the ceiling, the less he remembers. Getting home he definitely doesn’t remember. He turns his head to look at the room, but everything between his ears aches the second he does, and he can only be pretty sure this is really home. None of the things he used to use to identify home are here anymore, all swept off into boxes to collect dust. His glasses case on the nightstand is what gives it away, and he releases a weighted exhale.

What a bad idea. All he can do now is hope he either never has to drop anything off at the storage unit again, which isn’t very likely, or hope he runs into someone else at the office next time he goes, which also isn’t seeming likely. Heaving himself upright, he swings his feet over the side of the bed and waits for the universe to stop swiveling before he sets them on the ground.

He starts heading to the kitchen to have a glass of water, and each step is another layer of regret deeper than just the way his eyes threaten to detach and fall out. Who does that? When someone invites you for drinks, the polite thing to do is say yes and have a little to drink, not unbox six years of emotional regret and spill them all over the bar top. Everybody knows that someone asking what’s wrong doesn’t always mean they really want to know. He clutches his head while he walks against more than just his headache.

A small noise sounds in the living room while he passes through, and Wonwoo freezes in his tracks when he looks toward the source. For once, the couch isn’t empty, and it looks so different with an occupant than Wonwoo remembered. On the cushions, Minghao sits with his knees pulled against his chest, tapping away at his phone. His focus breaks when he notices Wonwoo come in, and a tiny crashing sound comes from his phone’s speakers.

“What,” Wonwoo croaks, throat not quite ready to do any talking yet, “are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” Minghao asks, resting his chin in his palm. “I brought you home.”

“And then you stayed?”

“You asked me to.” Minghao’s eyebrows elevate ever so slightly, and Wonwoo hates the look he’s getting even if his vision is too fuzzy to fully make it out. “Besides, how else are you gonna get back to pick up your car?” Woonwoo’s stomach sinks.

“My car?”

“It’s still at the bar. Do you really not remember?” Minghao blows out a low whistle, airy but confident. “No person with morals would have let you drive yourself.”

Wonwoo’s bones feel a little limp. So Minghao gave him a ride home. He wants to ask what else he said that he can’t bring back to his mind, but his tongue sticks inside his mouth. He wants to ask what he did, but thinking about anything makes him want to crumble to dust, and he suspects it was mostly crying and incoherent blubbering anyway; it’s a wonder Minghao weaseled his address out. One consolation is that Minghao is fully clad on his couch instead of naked in his bed, but Wonwoo guesses it wouldn’t have been that bad anyway if he had been. He still feels less gross for it.

Minghao unfolds his legs and watches as Wonwoo pours himself a glass of water, silent and owlish. Wonwoo’s throat isn’t sure whether it wants to accept this or reject, but he gets himself to swallow eventually, and it feels just a little bit better. Head still dancing back and forth between staying together and falling apart, he wades back into the living room and sits next to Minghao on the couch. It’s awkward. Everything is so awkward.

“Feeling any better?” Minghao asks slowly. His voice is smooth and easy on the ears, subdued enough that the sound of it doesn’t make Wonwoo feel like he’s taking an axe to the forehead. The question makes Wonwoo snort.

“I feel like I got hit by truck and then backed over again,” he says in a scratchy whisper. “And then hit again.” Minghao laughs a soft sort of giggle and leans back, eyes drawing closed. What a pathetic thing to laugh at.

“I mean, you know, emotionally,” Minghao tells him. “After talking about it. Are you feeling any better?”

Wonwoo blows a breath out through his nose and leans back until his head is touching the wall. Maybe, he guesses. Maybe just a little bit. At least Minghao didn’t say he fucked himself over by collecting so much crap like Bohyuk would have. At least he didn’t lecture him on how they were never good for each other to begin with like Wonwoo’s mother would have. And they were good for each other, damn it, or they used to be. And there’s nothing wrong with being sentimental. He feels his eyes start to water again and huffs.

“I guess,” he says. Minghao smiles.

“That’s good.”

“Is it really?” Wonwoo asks with a huff. “Why do you even care?”

“I mean, I’m not deeply invested or anything,” Minghao says, “but if you saw a stranger collapse in public, wouldn’t you care a little bit if they were okay? I think that’s normal.”

“Maybe,” Wonwoo allows, “but I didn’t collapse.”

“You looked like you were about to.” He looks at Wonwoo a while longer, and his eyes are each worlds too heavy for Wonwoo’s hungover shoulders.  “So what are you going to do?”

“About what?”

“All that stuff.” Minghao looks around while he talks, and his expression stays the same, but his face still tells it all: how very little is here at all, how it doesn’t even look like a home. After a brief visual journey around the sparse living room, he lands back on Wonwoo. “Are you going to get rid of it?”

“Does it really matter to you? It’s my money.” And my stuff, technically, he supposes.

“It is,” Minghao says, “but I called out of work for the first time in…” He looks at his wrist and the watch that isn’t there like it’ll tell him something. “Six years this morning. So I guess it does matter to me a little bit now.” Six years. What a funny coincidence. A completely unfunny funny coincidence.

“Why did you call out?” Wonwoo asks, though other questions push their way forward, too. What do you think I should do? What would you do, if it was your stuff? Minghao lifts his shoulders in a lethargic shrug.

“I felt like I should,” he says. “You just seemed like you needed to have someone look after you for a little bit.” That makes Wonwoo seem so pathetic. Maybe because he is, a little bit. “Besides,” he continues, looking again around the room, breathing in its emptiness, “somebody around here’s gotta take you to get your car back.”

Wonwoo blows out a sigh and drags his hands down over his face, stretching rubber skin until it feels like another face altogether. When he reaches for his glass to take another gulp of water, he almost asks Minghao what he thinks he should do with all of it even though he thinks he probably already knows. Almost, because just as he parts his lips to ask, a loud knock comes against the door and sets his teeth clenching. The sound is so jarring it makes his vision swirl, and before he thinks to argue against it, Minghao is rising to answer the door for him.

He hears the creak of the hinges as the door swings inward, then several beats of silence before a voice. “Who are you?” it asks, and it’s so familiar yet so not, so comforting while it stings Wonwoo right between the lungs. He lifts his face from his hands and snaps his head over just in time to see a painfully recognizable silhouette shove in through the door. A silhouette he still sees sometimes on the red backdrop of his eyelids when he blinks for too long in the sun. Breathing is so hard to do when his whole body hurts like this.

“Junhui,” he says, soft, more a movement of the mouth than spoken word. He looks so good, so perfectly the same, and Wonwoo knows he must look so messy and terrible, so lonely and pitiful hunched up on the couch. The bags under his eyes are filled with bricks.

Junhui searches the room, mouth a thin line all the while. He really doesn’t look different at all, down to the way his hair lays over his head, shirt wrinkles at the hem. If he smiled, it would look so natural, but he doesn’t. Wonwoo doesn’t want him to. Even if he never does again, Wonwoo still remembers just what it looks like. As Junhui eyes his surroundings, his expression remains stoic, but Wonwoo can tell he’s about to start asking questions. He could always tell.

“Who is this?” Junhui asks first, gesturing an arm to Minghao, who’s still standing by the door. This probably isn’t the thing Junhui is most curious about, but he’s always been the type of person to warm himself up with other questions first. Wonwoo used to be patient enough for it, but the sound of his voice today is cutting.

“That,” _is Minghao_ , he almost continues, but stops himself short instead to say, “is none of your business.” Junhui’s eyes widen, and Wonwoo’s insides feel so sick and twisted. “What are you doing here?”

“I realized I forgot some of my stuff,” he says, carefully weighting each syllable like Wonwoo’s a child who can’t understand him, “so I came back to get it.” He swings his arm at the room, at all the places things used to be. “Where is everything?”

“Gone.” Junhui’s face in return is stone.

“What did you do with it?”

“I got rid of it.” Wonwoo doesn’t look at Minghao on purpose even though looking at Junhui makes his skin burn. If he takes so much as a glance away, Junhui will know it’s a lie.

“Are you kidding me?” Junhui asks, tone edging toward anger but still trying to be civil. His lips curl into a bizarre smile that doesn’t quite fit on them, doesn’t quite match the rest of his face. “Since when do you get rid of things?”

“How long was I supposed to hang onto it?” Wonwoo asks instead of answering, because the real answer is never, and he’s already told a lie too many today. Junhui’s brows draw together.

“So you’re saying you don’t care if I wanted any of it?”

“Yeah, right,” Wonwoo scoffs. His brain is straining inside his skull, and he wants Junhui gone now. He wants him never to have knocked on the door. “You didn’t care whether I wanted to have all that shit or not when you left it all here.” It’s a terrible thing that Minghao has to be here for this, but Wonwoo is glad for it in a way. When Junhui leaves again, at least he’ll still be around. Junhui closes his eyes and massages them with his hands.

“God,” he groans, “okay. Fine. It’s gone.” He pushes his hair back, and Wonwoo hates the way it makes his heart catch still. “I just thought you would’ve cared enough to hang onto more.” And now Wonwoo’s heart is doing different things for different reasons, and he can hear the blood rushing angry behind his ears.

“I’m the one who doesn’t care?” he spits, jumping to his feet and pointing a finger. The sudden motion makes him woozy, and he thinks he might throw up, but he holds it down and stares at Junhui through it, pretends not to notice how his eyes have started to water. “How can you even say that I don’t care when you’re the one who left?”

“Clearly you’re getting on just fine, though, right?” he says, gesturing at Minghao still by the doorway. Minghao raises his eyebrows at being pulled into this, crosses his arms over his chest. Now Wonwoo is even angrier. “He seems comfortable enough here. Has he been helping you throw everything out?”

“Holy shit,” Wonwoo breathes, raking his hands through his hair. There are dizzy stars on the backs of his eyelids when he closes them, but he stays standing. “You don’t get to do this to me.”

“Do what?”

“You _know_ what.” Wonwoo is almost shouting now, and the sound of his own voice is competing with the quick clip of his heart for space in his ears. “It’s been a month—more than a month—since I’ve even heard from you. Don’t come and act like what I’m doing is your business anymore.”

“Listen,” Junhui says, “that’s not what I’m doing. I didn’t want to come argue.”

“No, you listen.” Wonwoo takes one shaky step forward. It’s strange how someone who you once thought was everything can turn so quickly into a waking nightmare when they disappear for a while. “I don’t care why you came here. None of your stuff is here anymore.” He bites the insides of his cheeks raw. “You can’t just keep everything you don’t care about here until you realize you actually do care. This isn’t your closet, Junhui.” In the corner of his vision, the image of Minghao starts to blur. “It’s my home, and I want you to leave.”

For a long while, Junhui just stares at him. He looks hurt, more than just a little bit, and Wonwoo wants to feel bad, but he can’t. Not when he is this hurt. Not when he’s been this hurt for all this time. When he’s been hurting so much more. His throat is sore from fighting tears down, and he waits in silence until Junhui eventually straightens and blinks. Right now, he’s really looking at him for the first time.

“Fine,” he says, short and soft. “I’ll leave. Sorry to bother you.” On his way back out the door, he offers Minghao a small nod, and then Wonwoo listens to the sound of his footsteps getting quieter as they trail down the hallway. When they’ve stopped echoing around inside his skull, he slumps onto the couch again and cradles his face in his palms.

Twice in two days is so much more often than he likes to cry, but his headache isn’t doing him any favors, and he feels the wetness on his fingers before too long. The cushions slump when Minghao sits beside him on the couch, and Wonwoo wonders if he’s going to say anything or if he’s just going to sit there quietly until he’s got himself back together. Minghao’s hand finds its gentle way to his shoulder and pats three times, four, and Wonwoo blows air out through his nose.

“Sorry you had to be here for that,” he whispers, and Minghao’s hand pats again.

“I’m not that bothered,” he says, quiet. His voice is so soothing, and even if he’s lying to save Wonwoo’s feelings, he’ll take it. “You gonna be alright?”

“I’m good,” Wonwoo says. It probably seems like a lie, and maybe it kind of his, but he drags his face free and takes a look at Minghao. “I’m fine.” Minghao hums, low.

“I believe you.” Maybe he shouldn’t.

It takes Wonwoo a while to cool himself back down, for his head to stop screaming in pain, but he gets there eventually and starts drying his face off. Minghao stays still beside him the whole time, and strangely, his presence is helping. The empty apartment all on its own would have been so much worse to curl up in if he only had himself as company when Junhui stopped by.

“You know,” Minghao says when Wonwoo’s chest has stopped clenching like a fist around a precious heirloom, “I’m aware I don’t really know anything about your relationship with that guy for the past six years, so you can ignore me.” He takes a deep breath in and hangs onto it for a while. “But if that’s the way it has been—if that’s the way he’s been treating you this whole time—it might not be such a bad thing to split.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Wonwoo says. Maybe that is how it always was; he can’t remember. Maybe they were never as good for each other as he always thought. There’s too much stuff between the two of them now to pretend the break is clean. “Anyway, I think I’ve decided.” Minghao blinks slowly.

“Decided what?”

“All that stuff,” Wonwoo says, “that I’ve got in the unit.” He licks his lips and ignores the dryness in his throat, ignores how wrong it feels to say this, ignores how much the thought puts him at ease. “I’m gonna get rid of it.”

 

Obviously, it can’t all go. Those shoes, for example, are too nice to throw out, and Wonwoo likes them even though they remind him of too many things. Minghao says he likes them too when they go through the boxes, which is a clear sign he shouldn’t get rid of them, so they stay. But there’s a lot of stuff that really has no option but to be set on fire or chucked into a garbage bag, and every last thing in that unit will be appraised.

Minghao’s approach to it is very philosophical. Apparently it’s some Japanese technique, one where you hold something and try to decide whether it makes you happy, then throw it away based on that. He takes charge after Wonwoo flounders halfway through his very first box of junk, handing things over one by one and waiting for Wonwoo to deliver the final verdict on whether it’ll go back on the shelves or into one of the big black garbage bags slowly filling beside them.

The fifth box takes a while for them to get to, and it’s full of cloth. Minghao eyes its contents with eager eyes from where he sits curled beside the couch, tugging the first bundle out gently and shaking it around. It’s a shirt, black and decorated with pale pastel flowers, and Wonwoo remembers exactly where he got it. They’d gone to see a show, one of the first stops of a headlining tour for a band Junhui liked intensely for eight months. It stood out to him at the merch table, and he bought it on impulse because it was pretty and made him feel like he should be there. Minghao hands it over like he’s afraid it’ll tear, and it’s so much softer than Wonwoo remembers.

“How do you feel?” Minghao’s been asking this every time he puts something in Wonwoo’s grip, and it’s starting to sound more like noise than words. Wonwoo rubs the fabric between his fingertips in thought.

“I don’t know,” he says. He likes this shirt even if he hasn’t worn it much. The band’s name is tinier than tiny, subdued in cursive below the flowers on the front, and there aren’t tour dates on the back to give it away explicitly. If it didn’t make him think of Junhui, he’d have no problem keeping it. But it does make him think of Junhui.

“Do you like that shirt?”

“I mean, yeah.” Wonwoo sighs. “I got this with him at a concert we went to a couple years ago. He went through a whole phase with this band.”

“Is it a good memory?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it fun?” Minghao asks. “Did you have fun at the concert?”

“I guess.” Wonwoo doesn’t really remember much about it. He was already a few drinks deep by the time the opening band started their set because Junhui wanted to be there so early, and it all started to melt together after that. Their music wasn’t bad, if Wonwoo tries to think about it. Even though he can’t think of the words, he can recall the whole crowd singing along around him.

“If it was fun, then you should keep it.” Minghao leans against the side of the couch while he speaks, head lolling to the side, and he looks a little dreamy. “Not every memory has to be a bad one. Besides, it’s a nice shirt.” Wonwoo huffs and folds it neatly, places it in the short stack of items to keep while Minghao watches him.

“I wish you wouldn’t say it that way,” he says. When Minghao raises his eyebrows, he clarifies, “It sounds so obvious when you put it like that.”

“Maybe it is obvious,” Minghao hums with a grin.

He reaches out to place a hand on Wonwoo’s shoulder, and for a moment, Wonwoo thinks he’s going to kiss him. And he wonders if he would be okay with that. And he thinks he might. And he wonders whether it’s even okay that he might, whether he shouldn’t. He must be showing it all on his face, because Minghao fixes him with an awkward look, but he doesn’t retract his hand.

“What?” Minghao asks.

“Nothing,” Wonwoo says, and Minghao quirks one eyebrow. He sighs. “I thought you were going to kiss me for a second.”

“Really?” For too long, Minghao only looks at him, eyes aglow with muted curiosity and even softer surprise. He looks at Wonwoo’s lips very briefly before resuming eye contact. “Did you want me to?”

“I don’t think I would have not wanted you to,” Wonwoo tells him, and he knows it’s needlessly indirect, but he still says it. All Minghao does is look at him for a while, stare soft but unwavering, hand still.

“Well,” he begins, “I wasn’t going to.” The intonation on the final word leaves something to be desired, a sort of implied _but_ , but Minghao doesn’t let it stay implied. After a beat, he leans forward, gradual and giving, leaves Wonwoo with enough time to run away if he decides he doesn’t want to be here, but Wonwoo waits for him to arrive. It’s a light kiss, very chaste and very short, and maybe Wonwoo isn’t quite as ready as he thought he would be, but it’s refreshing. More refreshing than the rim of any glass he’s put to his lips in the past two months.

“There you go,” Minghao hums, lifting his hand from Wonwoo’s shoulder and curling it under his own chin. Wonwoo can still feel its impression in a comfortably haunting way.

“I don’t know if I was ready for that,” he admits softly, and Minghao laughs at him. The good-natured kind of laugh where someone says the exact thing you expected them to say. The sound is reminiscent of something fond that only barely aches.

“That’s fine. I figured you might not be.” He reaches into the box and pulls out the next garment, another shirt from a different concert, much gaudier and boasting a bleach stain. Wonwoo doesn’t hesitate to throw it into the trash, and then Minghao is diving into the box again. “But it’s not like you have to be all good today. I’ll be around.”

“Will you?”

“Sure.” Minghao grins and tosses the next shirt. More garbage. This gets easier the longer they do it, which is good, because they’ve still got a long way to go. “Someone’s gotta help you declutter. Besides, I want to see all the cat figurines.” Wonwoo sighs beneath his twinkling giggle and throws another item into the garbage bag.

It takes four more all-day sessions to get everything sorted, and Wonwoo’s happy with what he has left. His kitchen cabinets are four mugs richer, and his almost-new sheets sit bundled in the linen closet as back-ups, long washed free of any scent. He even keeps a few cat figurines—the cutest ones, the ones that cost too much to feel good about throwing away. They look nice on the coffee table. Down the road, sometime after some time, Wonwoo watches Minghao polish all the dust off them from the couch, and he thinks collecting a stupid amount of stuff you never should have had to begin with has some merits of its own.

**Author's Note:**

> woo boy! how's it going. hope yall like wonhao.  
> i had this idea a little while ago and i just really wanted to write it so i did... honestly for the first couple days of writing this i was really going so ham and everything was flowing out so easily and i did hit a little bit of a block toward the end there but she's done! and yet another box to check on the list of "rarepairs whose tags never wanted me to taint them" but oh well. i hope you like it anyway!! thanks so much for reading if you read, and i really really hope you were able to enjoy this, flaws and all!! wonhao is good actually and deserves more recognition (surprise surprise. this applies to so many ships). let's hope everybody hops on the train eh  
> as always, feedback is greatly appreciated! thanks so so much for reading!!


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